I would very much like us to take the opportunity to clean up the
terminology
on the URI spec which has confused people. It is my considered opinion that
this would be far preferable:
URI - the actual identifier string, with or without a #fragid.
URI reference - a string used in a language to specify a URI, for which
relative form may be used where a base exists. ((This is not the only way of
specifying the value of a URI - one can use various
character sets, namespace prefixes, etc))
The spec would do well to define the function from base and reference to
URI and back again
rel(u, base) and abs(u, bae)
and to point out that you can use abs(rel(u, base), base) for u in all
circumstances.
Tim Berners-Lee